From a TV perspective, Christmas Eve 1966 looked grim. The
regular Saturday night college basketball broadcast was suspended due to the
holiday, and while many viewers in the New York area might have had something better to do, those who tuned in to local
broadcaster WPIX would face an hour and a half of nothing, followed by
a roller derby at 11:30. WPIX president Fred Thrower had a
suggestion: the station would announce the cancellation of all its programming
that evening "in order to present a WPIX Christmas card to our viewers."
(The roller derby, Thrower noted, "we can easily knock out.")
That Christmas card, he proposed in a November 1966 memo, would be a closeup
shot of a cheery fireplace, complete with Christmas stockings and flaming
Yule logs, "which would be repeated (via a looping process) over and over
continuously" accompanied by Christmas music. It would serve, he hoped, as a
comforting holiday backdrop for those New York apartment-dwellers
with no fireplace of their own. The WPIX Yule Log debuted on Dec. 24, 1966. It ran commercial-free for three
hours. (See TIME's top 10 Holiday TV Specials

The New York Times called it "the television industry's first experiment in
nonprogramming." It was a surrealist's joke, a postmodernist's dream  the
television, literally, as the family hearth  and an immediate success. The
Yule Log became a TV mainstay in New York that regularly won its time slot;
dozens of other U.S. cities either picked up the WPIX footage or shot their
own. The Log did have its drawbacks, however. The original 16mm footage (shot in
Gracie Mansion, home of New York Mayor John Lindsay) was only 17 seconds
long, and the flames skipped noticeably every time it looped. In 1970,
with the original film deteriorating, WPIX decided to reshoot the video as a
six-minute 35mm loop. When producers approached the Mayor's office for
permission to film again in Gracie Mansion, however, they were denied: during
the production of the first Yule Log, the legend goes, the camera crew had
removed a fire grate to get a better shot, and sparks had burnt through a
$4,000 carpet.

The 1970 Yule Log, which is the one most viewers are familiar with (and
which was finally filmed in a California fireplace in the sweltering heat), ran until 1989. By that time the show  if you can call it
that  had been cut back to two hours; to many station executives, the
Yule Log was an antique, and its long-running, commercial-free format a
financial drain. The fire was snuffed out in 1989.
The Yule Log spirit, however, proved harder to extinguish. In ensuing years,
and especially following the growth of the Internet, fans of the original
Log began clamoring for its return. Joseph Malzone, a New Jersey-based
audio-video technician, and music collector Lawrence "Chip" Arcuri started
theyulelog.com to commemorate the holiday special, and collected
hundreds of supportive email messages demanding its return. After the 9/11
terror attacks, amid growing demand for what WPIX's president called
"comfort food" television, the station agreed to digitally remaster the Log, and restore it to its place of glory. In 2006, for its 40th anniversary, Malzone and Arcuri resurrected the
original soporific audio, featuring recordings from Percy Faith, Henry
Mancini and the Ray Coniff Singers.

The Yule Log is now available on demand, in HD, and as a downloadable podcast. It's been the subject of a TV documentary, A Log's
Life. Visitors to Stephen Colbert's website can watch their own Book Burning Yule Log. And for the full meta effect, there's even a
YouTube video where you can watch the Log burning on a TV screen
on your computer.

This holiday season, Log lore has a new wrinkle: Chicago-based cable network
WGN America has re-recorded a new version of the holiday classic for broadcast nationwide.
Yule Log: The Golden Age of Christmas promises nine hours of freshly
filmed, high-definition Yule Log merriment, from the office fireplace of
former Tribune Co. President Colonel McCormick,
accompanied by recordings of classic radio shows  including rarely-heard
radio versions of holiday classics A Christmas Carol and It's a
Wonderful Life (featuring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed reprising their
film roles.)

For the Yule Log purists, though, it was as if WGN America tried to sell New Coke. In response to a CBS Sunday Morning video
comparing the two yule logs, fans bombarded segment host Mo Rocca's blog with protests ("The person who wants the new yule log is a f**king
loser and an communist. He should get fired from his job. Merry Christmas,"
one wrote). Sean Compton, WGN's Senior Vice President for
Programming Entertainment, received email
complaints as well. "I'm getting attacked," he says. "I had 10 emails this
morning, and I don't know how they're getting my address." Compton, who
came to WGN from radio, originally came up with the idea after stumbling
across the radio plays on the Internet one Christmas Eve a couple years ago.
"These are shows that haven't been heard in 60 years. You'd think if
anything, the traditionalists would be like, 'This is really cool.' Mitch
Thrower, son of the Yule Log's creator, isn't sure his father would agree.
"If my Dad was around now, I suspect he would have preferred the traditional
WPIX Yule Log," he says, "because of the sentimental value for millions of
people, and the power of tradition."

It's not entirely a fair comparison to WGN: While the national cable network
plans to run the Golden Age of Christmas special, local affiliates like New
York's WPIX will still air their traditional Yule Log programming. And in
the spirit of the season, WGN announced Dec. 22 that, in the wake of the
complaints, it would follow its Christmas Eve broadcast of the new Yule Log
with a Christmas Day showing of the original. For those keeping score,
that's almost ten and a half hours of festive holiday combustion  and for fans
of Fred Thrower's original inspiration, it's nothing short of a Christmas miracle.